In an effort to talk about the power of goal-setting along with some methods of setting and achieving goals, I’m going to discuss my four resolutions for 2010 this week.

In 2009, I really overspent on my hobbies. My board game collection expanded significantly. I picked up several new video games and computer games. I picked up several new items for the kitchen that were fairly pricey (Le Creuset isn’t inexpensive). Perhaps worst of all, I purchased quite a few books that I probably could have easily checked out at the library.

These purchases weren’t impulsive and they weren’t things that I could not afford. We still spent far less than we earned for the year. My concern is that I don’t really need this much stuff and, more importantly, that I’m subscribing to lifestyle inflation, something that’s dangerous to our long term financial health.

Just before Christmas, I used some statements and totaled up my entertainment and hobby spending in 2009 – and the total was shocking to me. I need to make some changes, and 2010 is the right time to do it.

Making the Goal Specific
My total entertainment and hobby budget for 2010 is going to be exactly half of what I spent in 2009 on such expenses. That’s going to be a fairly dramatic change, especially given that I’ve already committed about 30% of my 2010 total to a year’s worth of piano lessons.

For this, weekly and monthly budgets and spending limits won’t work all that well. Even in 2009, I usually would go for weeks without buying a thing, then buy one or two fairly expensive items. The real trick for me is to spread out the gap between buying those expensive items and find other ways to pick up items I’m interested in for my hobbies.

Breaking It Down Into Microgoals
So, how can I reinforce this big goal with microgoals? Mostly, it’s just a matter of channeling the things I might spend money on into less expensive channels.

For example, I intend to visit the library with my kids every other weekend. In the past, our visits would be monthly – or even less frequently. These longer gaps between library visits meant that I would run out of borrowed reading material much more frequently and would then turn to other sources for books – some of them expensive. By going to the library more often, I head this desire off at the pass. Similarly, my first stop for book shopping will be PaperBackSwap, not Amazon.

I also intend to get more involved with board gaming groups in Ames and Des Moines, which will give me an outlet to trade some board games I don’t play for others I might play instead of just buying them on occasion. I’ll also focus more on video game swapping instead of just picking up new, interesting titles.

Just giving up hobbies and activities I enjoy is a route to failure. Instead, I just need to find less expensive outlets for those hobbies and activities.

Feedback and Adjustment
Each month, I’ll total up my entertainment and hobby spending and compare it to where I should be at that point in the year. This will give me a very good idea as to whether I’m spending more than I should or if I’ve really got my spending in check.

If I find that I’m spending too much, that’s a good time to try a “thirty day plan” and completely go on a hobby spending diet. This will encourage me to enjoy the things I already have instead of striving for new things.

If I’m spending well below my target (and I’m happy about it)… isn’t that a good thing?

Good luck with your 2010 goals!

In a recent post at Get Rich Slowly, J.D. defined the “basic law of frugality” as this: “Decide what’s important to you. Give yourself permission to spend on these things. Pinch pennies on everything else.” That’s a pretty spot-on definition, in my opinion.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that it speaks to the problems that both overspenders and cheapskates have.

Overspenders?
In most situations, it is easily possible for a person to spend substantially less than they earn. So what causes a person to spend more than they earn?

The answer is hidden in that phrase. Overspenders stretch their definition of what’s important to them to cover a lot of things.

I’ll use myself as an example. Back in my overspending days, there were a lot of optional things in my life that I defined as being important enough to throw my money at. I went golfing a lot. I bought gadgets by the truckload. I bought more video games than I could ever possibly play. I bought carts full of books.

The end result was twofold. First, I often didn’t have time to actually enjoy all of the stuff I had bought. Second, because of all of the spending, my life was in a rough place.

My definition of what was important in my life was skewed. I had elevated too many things to the threshold of “permission to spend freely.” Because of that, I spent much more than I needed to spend, but I had too many things in my life to actually thoroughly enjoy the things I was spending money on.

The solution? Cut back. Ask yourself what things you most enjoy doing and toss the rest of it. Look for ways of minimizing the costs of the things you do enjoy.

Frugality is often said to be miserable because you have to give up so much. In reality, frugality means not giving up the things that are actually important to you. The trick is stepping back, looking at your life, and figuring out what things are important and what things are not.

Cheapskates?
On the other side of the coin are cheapskates, a role that I’ve almost fallen into a time or two over the past few years.

Cheapskates apply principles of penny-pinching to every aspect of their life, even the important ones. Although they have financial stability in their lives, they do it at the expense of other elements of their life that could add a great deal of value.

Here’s an example from my own life. I love to read books. I read several books a month beyond what I review on The Simple Dollar.

For the better part of a year, I refused to buy a single book. Instead, I just reserved books that interested me at my local library and patiently waited for them.

Several titles came out that I was eagerly anticipating. I was able to read some of them fairly quickly (within three months) of their release. Others? I’m still waiting.

Even more noteworthy is that at least two of the books I checked out and read during that period were books that I strongly fell in love with and wanted to read again (and I was quite sure I would read them many times in the future, as I love returning to books that really make me think).

But I was cheap. I didn’t buy these books. I resolved to just check them out at the library when they became available again.

One Saturday afternoon, I was sitting at home, having just finished a book. I looked at my unread books and realized that the book I most wanted to read wasn’t there – a book I had read before and returned to the library after thoroughly enjoying it. The library didn’t have it, either. I checked on Amazon and realized I could have the book for just $7. And I talked myself out of buying it.

That’s when I realized I was being a cheapskate. I was avoiding spending $7 on something that I knew would give me many hours of enjoyment now and quite a few hours of enjoyment later on, plus it would be a book that I could recommend to friends and loan to them while they loaned me books as well. To not spend $7 on something I cared so deeply about – and it was a $7 I could easily afford – was pure cheapness.

It’s okay to spend money on things that are truly important to you. In fact, it’s good, because spending money specifically on things truly important in your life directly raises your quality of life much more than any other way you could spend your money.

Reading is important to me, so I’m no longer afraid to spend money on it. Yes, if I see a book I want to read, I’ll check to see if the library has it and read it from them first. Yes, I use PaperBackSwap religiously. But if those outlets don’t connect me with a book I’m passionate about, I’m no longer scared to go to the bookstore and pick up that book that I want. Doing so raises my quality of life quite a lot.

The Winners Are in the Middle
The best place to be is at that place between the overspenders and the cheapskates. People who know what’s truly important to them and aren’t afraid to spend money on it enjoy a higher quality of life than people who spend themselves into debt (adding a lot of stress and challenge to their lives) and people who never spend a dime (missing out on things that they truly value in life).

What are your central values? What’s really, truly important to you? Give yourself some permission to spend in those areas without worry – but then lock down the ship in the other areas of your life.

In an effort to talk about the power of goal-setting along with some methods of setting and achieving goals, I’m going to discuss my four resolutions for 2010 this week.

For several years, a keyboard has sat in our basement, gathering dust. I’ve looked at it often and wished I could play it, but the skill has eluded me and I’ve always found other things to do with my time.

One big problem is that I’m deeply embarrassed to practice in front of other people if I’m completely unskilled at something. Quite often, this would be enough to keep me from practicing in the evenings.

No more. In 2010, I’m going to finally learn how to play this instrument I’ve wanted to play for so long. Not only do I want it as an expressive skill, I want to know how to play as a social skill – something I can do at social events to entertain others.

Making the Goal Specific
For starters, I’ve found a local lady who is willing to give me a one hour lesson twice a week for a very reasonable price. I’ve talked over what I want to do with her and she’s quite happy to work with me on it. I’m also securing use of the piano at the church I attend, allowing me to practice to my heart’s content during the day. At home, I’ll practice on the keyboard to supplement this, likely with headphones at first.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that practice is the single most important thing you can do towards getting better, and that deliberate practice is the best form of practice. I’ve decided to commit to an average of one hour of deliberate practice a day on the piano (or keyboard) and an average of half an hour of free play on the piano (or keyboard) per day. My teacher has a ton of deliberate practice exercises for me to work on during that daily hour (I actually think she’s a bit incredulous that I’m actually going to follow through on this, to tell the truth).

My overall goal is to be able to play a handful of songs well by the end of the year. Many of the pieces are pop songs, but some of them are classical. I’ve got the sheet music (or am acquiring it) for each of these pieces and I intend to practice them during my “free play” times.

Breaking It Down Into Microgoals
Each week, I intend to get in seven hours of deliberate practice and four hours of free play on the piano. I’ve actually penciled in some practice blocks during weekdays when others won’t be around and can’t hear me flailing at the keys and sounding atrocious.

Once a week, I intend to do a “mini-concert,” where I give my best attempt at playing through the songs that I’m trying to learn how to play. I actually plan to make video recordings of these so I can see (and hear) how I’m improving. I’m almost willing to put these on YouTube.

Along the way, of course, I’m going to be learning how to read music, so I’ll also attempt playing a new song each day during my “free play” practice.

I fully don’t expect to wake up in a month – or even a year – and be able to play very well. I do expect some improvement from where I’m at now (which is roughly able to play “The First Noel” with one hand). I want to be able to watch a recording of how I was doing a month earlier and think to myself that I’ve improved – at least a little – since then.

Feedback and Adjustment
One of the biggest reasons I decided to hire a local teacher for this is for feedback and adjustment. She can provide pointers, tell me what I’m doing wrong, and suggest the right kind of exercises for me.

As I get better, I intend to play in front of my wife, who is at least moderately adept at multiple instruments, and ask her for feedback, which she will unabashedly give.

If I find that I’m not coming up with enough time to practice, I’ll find a social activity to drop. I already am leaning toward dropping a few activities in my life that eat up more time than I feel they’re worth and this goal is an important one to me.

Tomorrow, I’ll address my fourth and final 2010 goal – one that will push me to be more frugal.

In our kitchen, we have a shelf devoted solely to cookbooks. Upon this shelf sits a hefty number of volumes, from Joy of Cooking and How to Cook Everything to volumes like Molto Italiano and Fast Easy Fresh.

I use these cookbooks all the time, not necessarily for strictly following recipes, but for ideas on how to start on a particular dish or how to execute a particular technique. Some of them are pretty stained-up, in fact, because they sat out on the table while I tried something new.

Anyway, my friends and family have picked up on this proclivity towards cookbooks and often give me multiple cookbooks for gift-giving occasions. This is great – I love them.

But now we’ve reached an interesting crossroads. Our cookbook shelf is now full.

So what do we do now? For now, I’ve pulled off two cookbooks that we don’t refer to very often. I’ve put them in a separate box and now we’ll see whether I ever pull them out. If several months go by and I don’t look at them, we’ll stick them out in the yard sale (they’re not the “well-used” ones mentioned above).

What happens if I do use one of them? Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Creating a plan to achieve your 2010 resolutions This is more or less a “how-to” explanation for the reolution series I’m doing this week. (@ unclutterer)

Get a Grip on Your Debt: How to Obtain a Clear, Concise Financial Snapshot I’ve been using Quicken to do this over the last month. I’ve been intending to write a review of it, but it’s really difficult. One moment, I’ll think “Wow, why did I ever use a spreadsheet?” and then a few minutes later, I’ll think “That feature’s really annoying.” (@ wise bread)

The Basic Law of Frugality “Decide what’s important to you. Give yourself permission to spend on these things. Pinch pennies on everything else.” That’s pretty spot-on. (@ get rich slowly)

Automating Your Finances Is an Expensive Mistake I don’t trust automating bills that don’t have a regular amount month in and month out. For example, our mortgage is automated but our energy bill isn’t. (@ bargaineering)

How to Land a Freelance Writing Job The number one most important thing you can do to practice and get your work out there. If you want to write, write. Start a website and start sharing it. (@ dumb little man)

In an effort to talk about the power of goal-setting along with some methods of setting and achieving goals, I’m going to discuss my four resolutions for 2010 this week.

In 2001, I purchased a used 1997 Ford F-150 pickup truck. Over the ensuing eight years, I put nearly 120,000 miles on that truck.

As the truck approaches fifteen years of life, it’s showing some desperate signs of wear and tear. There’s a flood of repairs that are imminent on it. It also lacks in four wheel drive, which is something that we’ve decided we need due to the winter driving that we do. Perhaps most importantly, the truck will not seat five people – which is how many people our family will have come April.

To put it simply, the truck needs replaced. 2010 is the year to finally do it.

Making the Goal Specific
The vehicle that replaces our truck will not be a commuting vehicle – instead, it will mostly be used for short, irregular trips throughout the year and for winter driving. Because of that, fuel efficiency isn’t as vital as it was for our last car purchase (a car for commuting).

It needs to comfortably seat two adults and (at least) three children with some adequate storage space left over. It also needs to have four wheel drive to adequately handle winter weather. We have been extremely lucky multiple times with weather and driving over the past few years and we don’t feel safe continually dodging that bullet.

As a result of these factors, we’re either looking at a minivan or a SUV. We’ve looked at Consumer Reports car issues for the middle years of this decade and have some specific used models we’re considering and looking for. We want to purchase the vehicle before the birth of our third child, which means the deadline for making the purchase is April 15. Our tentative plan is to utilize my wife’s 2010 teaching spring break to finalize our purchase, unless we find a great opportunity before then.

Since our goal is to pay cash, we also need to have an adequate amount of cash on hand to pay for this vehicle. We’re estimating $12,000 is our cap, with our purchase (ideally) coming in significantly below that.

Breaking It Down Into Microgoals
Our microgoals are simple. For our financial goal, we simply need to end a few CD ladders and have the cash deposited into our checking account, which will take care of the cash we need.

The real trick is continually moving forward on the purchasing decision itself. By the end of January, we’re going to have a full list of acceptable models for us to buy – ones that have the features we need and a blue book price in our range. After that, each week we will trawl the websites of various car dealers as well as the classified ads and Craigslist looking for an appropriate match. My specific goal is to find at least two cars to look at every week, whether at dealerships or sold by their owner.

When we find one we like that seems like a good deal from our research, we’ll simply pull the trigger and buy it.

Feedback and Adjustment
What do we do if we simply don’t find any vehicles that match our needs? If I find that my methods aren’t coming up with enough matches – and this should be obvious within the first week or two of serious searching – I’ll widen my net. I’ll ask friends and relatives to help me search in their respective areas, for starters.

If this still proves fruitless, I’ll step back and look at our original conclusions about which models we’re looking for. Perhaps we need to include older models or other models we weren’t previously considering in our search.

If we have a financial issue, we’ll re-adjust our criteria for what we intend to buy by including older models in the search.

Tomorrow, I’ll address my third 2010 goal – one that focuses on an area of personal growth.

Charlene writes in:

I’m getting married in March. My future husband and I are talking about when and how to merge our finances and we’ve had some difficulty coming up with a plan. What did you and your wife do? What would you suggest for other couples on the cusp of marriage?

First of all, I’ll point out that when my wife and I were first married, neither one of us had any clue about how to manage our money. We basically left all of our accounts the same, keeping accounts and direct deposits at separate banks and without any sort of shared savings or checking accounts. This worked for us for a while, but it had serious disadvantages, chief among them the fact that it was hard for either one of us to really get a grip on what our true financial situation was.

I would not recommend doing that unless you have a very good, clear reason for doing so. It’s very clear in that wonderful 20/20 hindsight that the disadvantages of such a split far outweigh the advantages.

Instead, I would fold your accounts together at whichever bank the two of you already use that offers the best customer service. Don’t worry about things like savings rates and such for your primary accounts – if you want to seek out a great savings rate, seek that out separately and use a second bank for your savings purposes. The most important factors on your primary checking account and bank services are the customer service provided to you and the lack of fees on the account for various things (keeping the account open, ATM use, and so on).

I would not do this until you’re married, but I would follow through with the plan pretty quickly after you’re married. Before you’re married, you’re basically opening yourself up to the potential for a very sticky situation without any real benefit other than just a bit of short term convenience.

Instead, invest your time coming up with a detailed plan before the wedding so that you can just quickly execute it after the marriage, getting your affairs in order as quickly as possible.

You may also want to consider a prenupital agreement. You may be deeply in love right now, but people can and do change. A prenupital agreement makes any divorce process that may happen much simpler and less fraught witn anger and emotion, both of which you can surely live without in such a situation. If you find agreeing on a prenupital agrangement is difficult, you may want to step back and have some discussions about why this is – and what that might mean for your relationship.

Another thing worth considering is life insurance. Now that you’re merging your financial lives, you may find yourself investing in things that you may not be able to afford individually, like a home, more expensive cars, or children. A term life insurance policy can ensure that your partner is not stuck in an incredibly difficult financial situation should you pass away unexpectedly. Even if you don’t have such expenses now, term life insurance is still worth considering because the cost of a policy is much lower when you’re young than when you’re older (or have pre-existing conditions that may be discovered later on).

It might seem strange at first glance to suggest this as financial advice, but I would strongly encourage you to have discussions about such issues as having children now rather than after you’re married. If you have differing feelings on such key issues and haven’t come to an understanding about them (and trust me, quite often one side thinks there’s an “understanding” and the other side does not), they can fester within a marriage, turning a loving situation into something painful and often quite financially costly for everyone involved (well, except for the lawyers – they clean up). Talk things through – items such as future career plans, dreams, ambitions, children, and so on should be discussed and understood and both partners should at least understand each other’s positions, even if they’re not fully on the same page.

Marriage isn’t something that benefits from being entered into lightly. Merging your accounts is just the first step – you’re often merging lives in ways you never even considered before. Take the time now to at least consider these changes – and talk about them – before you take the plunge.

In an effort to talk about the power of goal-setting along with some methods of setting and achieving goals, I’m going to discuss my four resolutions for 2010 this week.

I’m overweight.

One of the biggest reasons for this is hypothyroidism, something I’ve had literally since I was born (and have treated with medication since I was three days old). In essence, it mostly means that it’s extremely easy for me to gain weight due to dietary choices. If I’m not highly careful with my diet choices, I gain weight really quickly. Even if I’m careful, I usually just maintain my weight.

Lowering my weight has many personal and financial benefits. It reduces my health care risks – and my potential costs. It improves my quality of life – and likely my length of life as well.

The one thing that has consistently worked for me in reducing weight is a regular exercise routine. During much of 2009, I had a successful routine and lost about 35 pounds. However, during the run-up to the completion of my book manuscript, my exercise routine fell apart and I gained some of the weight back (about 15 pounds of it).

In 2010, I’m ready to get back on the wagon. My goal is straightforward – I intend to lose weight at a healthy rate in 2010 due mostly to more exercise.

Making the Goal Specific
One major step to take when setting any goal for yourself is to make the goal specific and clear so that success and failure are clear and unambiguous. For me, this meant turning to my doctor and asking him what some healthy and realistic goals for 2010 would be.

He indicated clearly that I would be perfectly safe losing one pound a week. He encouraged moderate exercise and minimal dietary change beyond the addition of more vegetables. He encouraged me not to run, but to look for other forms of aerobic exercise.

If I followed the doctor’s advice and lost a pound a week throughout the year, I would lose 52 pounds. It’s a very noble goal, but it expects perfection throughout the year. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Thus, I’m going to aim for a lower goal. I intend to lose 40 pounds in 2010.

Breaking It Down Into Microgoals
What can I do each day or each week to achieve that goal?

In a given week, I should exercise several times. I intend to do three serious exercise sessions in a given week, along with a light one on the weekend. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll head out for an exercise routine at the gym, and on Saturdays or Sundays, I’ll do a lighter routine.

What exactly will that routine be (remember, specificity is key)? I signed up for a session on Monday, January 4, to identify a good routine for me to follow, and I’ll just follow that assigned routien.

Thus, each week, my microgoal is to do these three moderate exercise sessions and one light session. My overall weight loss goal will happen as a result of achieving that microgoal.

In addition, I’m going to eat a vegetarian lunch three out of five weekdays, replacing my usual lunchtime meal. This enables me to still eat leftovers for lunch and also eat out on occasion with coworkers, but also subtly improves my diet. It will also provide more incentive to eat vegetarian-focused dinners at home, so that the leftovers are vegetable-based.

Feedback and Adjustment
Each week, I’m going to record my success at each of those two microgoals, along with my weight. Over a period of time, it will become pretty clear whether the plan is working – am I consistently losing any weight over a period of a few weeks?

What happens if I’m not meeting my microgoals? Clearly, I’ll need to step back and re-evaluate my efforts. My suspicion is that the vegetarian microgoal will actually be trickier because I’ll forget about it, as it’s not tied to particular days. The exercise will be harder, as it’s already entered into my calendar (which I nearly live by). One potential solution to this would be to simply assign vegetarian days to myself.

What happens if the microgoals aren’t meeting my weight loss goals? My first response will be to visit my doctor again and simply ask for suggestions and perhaps some pointers on what exactly I can change. More exercise? Bigger dietary changes? We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Tomorrow, I’ll address my second 2010 goal – one that’s a bit more directly related to finances.

Each Monday, The Simple Dollar opens up the reader mailbags and answers ten to twenty simple questions offered up by the readers on personal finance topics and many other things. Got a question? Ask it in the comments. You might also enjoy the archive of earlier reader mailbags.

What was the best Christmas gift you received this year?
- Andrew

The most sentimental gift (by far) was a custom-made cookbook prepared by my wife and kids, including pictures of them and a ton of good recipes of many of their favorite foods (chosen by them). Never mind the photos – reading the recipes was fun because of how they connected so well with the person that selected them. For example, I saw the “chicken nuggets” recipe and immediately thought of my daughter, who for some inexplicable reason claims all of her food to be chicken nuggets. Broccoli is chicken nuggets. Scrambled eggs are chicken nuggets.

The most useful gift was probably also food-related. My parents gave me an 8″ Global chef’s knife, which will (aside from our paring knife) pretty much replace every other knife we own. It’s incredible to use.

Almost all of my gifts were excellent this year, though. Perhaps I’m just getting easier for other people to figure out.

Our local power company is offering this interest based savings plan to help pay for future bills when they jack up the rates in a year.

What I mean is, if you have a lot of extra money to throw at this program, than it’s a great thing but it defeats the purpose of helping those that won’t be able to afford the rate hike (like me).
- John

I’m not sure what you mean that it’s not going to help people save. Essentially, all the program does is give you a somewhat bigger bill now to reduce the size of your bill by even more in 2011 and beyond. I don’t think it’s intended to help those who can’t afford the higher rates.

If you are truly in financial hardship – whether it’s caused by a rate increase or not – you should look into the assistance programs offered by your power company. In this case, you’d be looking at this.

If you’re asking whether or not I would sign up for such a program in general, I would call them and ask to see specific numbers and estimates, but if it is what it appears to be, I would sign up. It would effectively be a 7.5% return on your money in what amounts to a savings account.

What was your favorite book of 2009?
- Jamie

It was easily Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. It’s simultaneously a great portrait of 1970s New York, a collection of moving stories, and a thoughtful reflection on the role of chance in human life. I’ll read this one multiple times again in the future.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention The Magicians by Lev Grossman, a wonderful fantasy novel that really draws on the impact that the stories we read as a child can come back and affect us as we grow older. I enjoyed it because it avoids the usual fantasy trap of making the heroes idealized versions of ourselves and instead makes them realistic people. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell might be my favorite fantasy novel of the last decade or so, but this one isn’t too far off the mark.

I am 25, and my boyfriend and I are looking at buying a house in DC. We barely have enough money to scrape together a down payment, but really want to take of low interest rates, the tax credit, and low housing prices in our market. We’re young and are pretty good with saving, and I am sure that we will be able to build up an emergency fund again, but do you think it is foolish to use all of our money like this, even if it is for a great investment and the timing is right?
- Ashley

For one, I don’t believe buying a primary residence is ever a great investment. It’s too illiquid and too subject to local housing market fluctuations to ever be thought of as an investment.

If you “barely have enough money to scrape together a down payment” and are buying in the D.C. area, that means you’re going to be taking on a pretty huge mortgage. Never mind the low interest rate – your monthly payments are going to be enormous no matter how you slice it. Tack on top of that your home ownership costs (maintenance, etc.), the other services you’ll need, and the inevitable emergencies (like the inevitable exploding toilet) where you can’t just call a landlord and instead have to foot the bill yourself and you’ve got an enormous cash outlay that, based on your own comments, sounds like it might be beyond your means.

Live cheap. Build your career into something high-earning and stable. Save up enough so that your life won’t go into high-wire mode as soon as you sign the mortgage. Don’t worry about “taking advantage” of the current housing market.

We’re regulars at a family chain restaurant, and we got a server who had waited on us only once before. I was glad to see her because I remembered she was very friendly, complimenting what I wore and telling us about her music studies at a nearby college.

Any thoughts, Trent? How do you think most of your readers would have handled the situation?
- Lenore

Regardless of any “stiffing,” that was incredibly rude and unprofessional of the waitress in question. Unless the restaurant is a place that enforces a gratuity on the bill, she has no right to any tip. You give that tip at your own discretion.

Yes, it’s courteous and customary to tip for good service. Yes, many waiters/waitresses rely on tipping for income and need that money. That still doesn’t excuse the behavior.

I would likely have told the manager of the incident. An employee with that little respect for customers (and that little amount of discretion) would likely be a staff liability.

I would also not return to the restaurant for a while, but I would not be opposed to returning after a period of time (and some staff turnover).

Trent you have mentioned your dream of publishing non-fiction. What type? Murder & mayhem? Sci-Fi? Romance? Touchy-feely? Are there any authors you emulate?
- Brenda

Most of my fiction can best be described as “what if” fiction. Usually, I try to change one fundamental piece of information about how the world works, then try to look at ordinary life through the eyes of a normal person in this world.

For example, I wrote a novel-length piece of work a few years ago about the invention of an engine that allowed us to travel between stars, but to do so consumed enormous amounts of pure, salt-free water. Eventually, we no longer had enough water for everyone to drink, there were enormous wars fought over water, and a lot of people had left Earth to visit other stars but were basically out of contact. From there, I tell the story of three brothers (actually pretty closely based on myself and my two brothers) and how they grow up in this world, with outsized dreams of space travel and leaving Earth but with a devastating reality around them.

My last short story that I completed to a reasonable level of satisfaction revolved around a single woman a year after the discovery of a way for people to reproduce asexually with ease and essentially raise clones of themselves from infancy. She chose to become impregnated with her clone, but now feels it was a very poor choice.

That’s just the kind of stuff I like to write.

Is investing in non-hybridized seeds worthwhile?
- Kenny

As with any investment, you have to ask yourself two big things. First, what’s your goal with the investment? Second, what’s the risk of the investment?

Non-hybridized seeds can be really worthwhile – if you’re an avid gardener. The big advantage of non-hybridized seeds is that they allow you to harvest seeds each year, then plant them the following year. You can even do your own plant breeding if you so wish. This is valuable if you’re into gardening or have beliefs that revolve around avoiding hybridized seeds.

There’s a risk, though. You can’t just let seeds sit for a large number of years – they simply won’t grow. You have to grow them regularly to maintain your seed bank.

If you don’t live in a place where you can easily grow your seeds, non-hybridized seeds are a waste of money. You need to be able to replenish your own stores or else the seeds will go bad after a few years.

Have you ever considered starting a “Simple Dollar” fantasy baseball league where you participate with a number of readers? You could set it up on Yahoo! Sports yourself, join the league, then allow people to sign up by giving out a code on the site.
- Allie

That’s actually a pretty good idea. I usually participate in three (yes, three) fantasy baseball leagues in a given year and it looks like at least one of my regular ones is now defunct due to the number of people who are either unable to play or have chosen to resign.

If you would actually be interested in participating in such a thing, leave a comment for this mailbag. If I see a lot of comments, I’ll start one in March. If I don’t see many comments, I’ll just let this sleeping dog lie.

Is there ever a situation where you think it’s appropriate to take out a loan instead of paying cash?
- Bill

I have no problem with home mortgages if you’re in a situation where you can get a low-interest loan and your payments are low compared to the rental costs of something comparable in the area.

I also don’t have a problem with taking out a loan with no interest at all as long as you already have the cash to cover the debt. Keep the cash yourself in a separate savings account, set up automatic payments from that account, then just let it be until the loan is paid off. You’ll have cash left sitting in the account.

In much the same way, I have no problem with credit card use as long as you pay the balance off in full each month.

The real problem with any debt is the interest you have to pay. That interest is basically a huge price for impatience – one of our most dangerous human impulses.

I’m a new dad, my daughter is great. She’s 11 weeks now. I’m fortunate that we have all of the financial stuff in order. I do have a demanding job, but I make it a priority to leave by 5 to spend time with my daughter before she sleeps for the night.

My question is, I firmly believe I can learn Chinese with 2 hours a week private lessons, plus 30 mins homework a night. But, I also cannot bear being late to see my daughter, and the thought of cutting out all this time for me to learn something, no matter how beneficial is driving me insane. What’s your take? Is this a quality investment of time, or shall I just enjoy my daughter and our time together?
- Arthur

Again, this is a question about investment. I think you need to sit down and ask yourself what the reward for this investment of time actually is.

It seems that you want your child to be in touch with his/her heritage, which is a noble goal. The real question is how highly that goal ranks in comparison to the also-important goal of spending a lot of time with your child.

I can’t answer that question for you because each one of us values different things on a personal level. For me, I would value the time I spend with my child. I would probably do something like purchase a copy of Rosetta Stone and spend some time each evening doing the program with my child, learning the language together. While it might not be as enriching as actually taking the classes, it would still teach some of the language and, perhaps more importantly, it would allow you to do it with your child.

Got any questions? Ask them in the comments and I’ll try to include them in a future reader mailbag.